


i'll go anywhere, blindly

by glitteration



Category: Bridgerton (TV), Bridgerton Series - Julia Quinn
Genre: Brother/Sister Incest, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, M/M, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M, aka this is secretly all about anthony bridgerton’s incredible excess of feelings, co-starring: simon's eyebrow and daphne's boobs, daphne and simon are great at seduction, dead dove do not eat but make it fluff, i'm gonna be honest with you guys and admit this show broke me, multiple guest appearances by anthony’s orange (it will not peel), not appearing in this film: reality or consequences, starring: anthony's fantastic observational skills and life choices, the only problem: anthony is super terrible at being seduced, this is essentially an incestuous romcom, will someone please give this poor man a cookie he is trying SO HARD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:54:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28405095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteration/pseuds/glitteration
Summary: “Anthony?” Daphne’s voice is rough. “We thought you would be asleep.”He tries not to think overmuch on why she sounds that way, or why her glib acceptance of his presence sets his pulse racing.  “Milk,” he says finally, wondering if perhaps the Lord is sending a new form of the plague of locusts to punish him for his transgressions, and how long it could possibly take to run to the lake at this time of night so that he might drown himself in it. “I needed…”“Milk?” Simon offers, far too amused for a man in his position.“Milk,” Anthony agrees, and flees without offering further elaboration or apology.ORIn a shamelessly plot-free post s1 au, Anthony is just trying to spend some quality time at Clyvedon and not be a total downer. Somehow, he keeps stumbling over his sister and her husband while they're getting it on.He thinks God might be punishing him for wanting to be the filling in that ducal sandwich; Daphne and Simon think it's a good thing he's real cute and are just patiently waiting for him to catch up.
Relationships: Anthony Bridgerton/Simon Basset, Anthony Bridgerton/Simon Basset/Daphne Bridgerton, Daphne Bridgerton/Anthony Bridgerton, Daphne Bridgerton/Simon Basset
Comments: 46
Kudos: 288





	1. in which anthony hasn't a clue what is happening to him, but as ever he will inevitably be very sorry about whatever he did to deserve it

**Author's Note:**

> Is there a fluff version of dead dove, do not eat? If there isn't, I have invented it and you are now reading it. I'll have some half-joking mentions of Anthony feeling terrible about wanting to fuck his sister and her husband, but in the same way that the show wiggles its hands and demands we not ask for too many details about how all the mechanics of this world work and exists in a romance novel rules only pls parallel universe to our own, I'm just handwaving that he's mostly feeling bad because they're married and God says it's not cool to lust after somebody's spouse, let alone both spouses at once. This is not my Usual Kind of Thing but this show broke me so I'm just sort of running with it and seeing what happens. 
> 
> If you came here for tortured incest angst or realistic depictions of incest in real life or this is just Extremely Not Your Thing, I see, support, and validate you but sadly cannot provide for you in this setting because get in we are doing an INCESTUOUS ROMCOM, BIIIIIIITCHES! 
> 
> Have I said incest enough? I feel like maybe I have. Anyway, on with the ridiculous show!

The dust from Daphne’s carriage wheels has barely had time to settle when her letter arrives. She insists he is unhappy on his own, and in no uncertain terms makes it clear she will not leave him to wallow alone. The season over, she argues, and the rest of the family retired to their own country seat for the rest of the summer—there is no reason for him to stay. Simon agrees she has the right of the matter, she adds, and so Anthony must come to stay at Clyvedon with them.

Anthony cannot fault her logic, though the conclusion falls short of the mark. Unhappy or otherwise, it hardly signifies in the grander state of affairs. There are innumerable reasons to stay. Now that they’ve sorted whatever difficulties plagued the early marriage, Daphne and Simon are truly unabashed about their passion for each other. They find a need to affirm it everywhere, it seems. The dark corners of ballrooms, any garden they stumble into, it’s all the same. They love each other wildly.

Wildly and _frequently_. Often at a volume only just below a dull roar. Anthony found himself guarding too-thin doors at parties through the end of the season, deterring any passersby with paper thin excuses and grimly pretending not to hear the sounds of lovemaking taking place just beyond. It made a fine escape from matchmaking and he is beyond happy for them, well and truly delighted to see people he loves so much perfectly matched and enamoured of each other, but he cannot bear a single second more of that sordid duty.

Their behavior was scandalous while they were in London. Heaven only knows what the happy couple get up to now that their love can be expressed far from the ever-watchful eyes of the ton.

And so, when stacked against such a barrage of reasons to politely refuse and continue to drink too much in the comfort of his own lodgings, Anthony cannot imagine what insane impulse prompts him to set them all aside and accept Daphne’s summons. A full _fortnight_ at Clyvedon—he must be mad.

A proper brother would know the invitation was extended out of pity and leave them to their happiness. A proper brother would be disgusted by the very thought of continuing to witness such vociferous affirmations of love between his sister and oldest friend. A proper brother would rather waste away in society’s emptied out shell than ever stumble on such a thing again.

It seems he is not a proper brother, for here he is, standing in the doorway to Simon’s study and finding himself quite unable to look away from the sight of his head buried between Daphne’s legs.

They hadn’t even the decency to hide him beneath her skirts, some dim helpless part of him notes. The long skirt of her gown is up around her belly. She’d be bare to him entirely, every soft place, if only Simon moved—something he feels no inclination to do, if the way Daphne’s breathing is any indication. He does well by his sister, then. He’d been just as solicitous when they were young men, so deeply eager to please.

Simon had knelt before him, too, broad back and strong shoulders nestled firmly between his thighs, warm breath on his cock and that damnable smug grin on kiss bruised lips. He stirs to the memory, breath catching in his throat. _Now_. He has to leave now, before they see him.

He glares at his feet, commanding them to move. They do not, and then he chances another guilty look back at the lovers entwined on the desk and he is lost, regardless.

Daphne has turned her rapt attention away from her husband. She is staring _him_ , wide eyed and frozen in what must be shock.

Though… For a moment, Anthony almost imagines there is something other than horror in her gaze, that a measure of his own secret heat has a home in her breast, as well.

“Anthony!” The surely imagined moment breaks. Daphne clutches at Simon’s shoulders with white fingers. “Simon, please. It’s—”

“No, no need to... Ah. Well.” _No need to stop_ , Anthony nearly says, and thank God he manages to bite the final words back. Such a confession would have been too close enough to the truth of the matter to be borne. His sister never need know that he did not _want_ them to stop, that he would do anything to fall to his knees beside Simon if he could. “I knocked, but... Apologies. I ought to have waited.” Further pathetic attempts at speech fail entirely, because Simon is reflexively pulling away and Anthony can see the way the side of his face glistens, can see Daphne— “Apologies,” he mutters again, and slinks away as he should have done at the start.

As a proper brother should _want_ to do.

He takes himself in hand as soon as he stumbles back to his room, half-drunk on whatever wild impulse seized him and held him fast, all inclinations towards shame or self-denial rent to shreds in its wake. His mind is a sordid jumble; Daphne’s face, the rose in her cheeks—the way Simon had knelt before her, the way she’d held him fast, the half-invitation Anthony could swear he’d seen before she spoke…

Finding satisfaction brings none. He sends word through one of the maids that he’ll be skipping dinner in favor of rest.

The hunger pangs he suffers are nothing compared to the constant thought; for a moment, she’d thought of the same thing he did. It burns, and so he burns, and by morning so do incredibly delicate parts of his anatomy.

“Serves you right,” he says to the dazed looking man in the mirror. “She’s married. They are married to _each other_. And if that were not reason enough… good God, man, you’re her brother.”

The wretched man doesn’t have any more answers for that than Anthony does himself. He stares mutely back, flushed cheeks and guilty eyes an accusation all their own.

“Her _brother_ ,” Anthony says again, and prepares to be just that.

* * *

Daphne shocks him by spurning his best attempts at apology.

“You _did_ knock,” she reminds him, and returns to the odd assortment of food on her plate with the kind of focused gusto he remembers from mama in the months preceding the birth of each of his younger siblings. She barely shows now that her gown isn’t up around Simon’s ears, but Anthony could no more blank out the knowledge of that gently rounding curve than he could will away the memory of Simon unclothed and on his knees in entirely different circumstances, pulling apart an entirely different Bridgerton sibling. “We cannot fault you for anything but poor timing, not if you knocked.”

“I… Daphne, there is no need for you to absolve me of this.” Blast it, without admitting the depths of his sin Anthony can find no decent way to tell her she ought to be angry with him. If she knew surely she would wish him far away from her, as far away as geography will allow, and Simon… regardless of their history, Simon would bury Anthony on her behalf, as a husband should.

Lusting after his own sister _and_ her husband. What sort of man must he be, to make himself a harbor for such desires.

Simon claps a hand on his shoulder and slings his other arm around Anthony’s neck. For a breathless, panicked moment Anthony is sure Simon knows exactly what he’s been thinking about them both. “You should listen to my wife, Anthony, and then simply follow her excellent advice to the letter. I find it makes life easier, and we all are the happier for it.” He tightens his grip in teasing admonition, each finger a burning point of contact Anthony feels scorching him to his very marrow. “At least this time we escaped the aftermath of your interruption without bloodshed.”

“Yes, well…” Thinking is utterly impossible with Simon’s hands on him and Daphne smiling in determined cheerfulness across the table. “I know better than to try and argue you out of this, sister, and now that you have called in your reinforcements I seem to find myself entirely outflanked. If you are bound and determined to forgive me, how could I do anything but capitulate and be forgiven?”

“Just so.” Daphne nods, signaling a decisive end to the matter that reminds Anthony altogether too much of Lady Danbury.

Simon gives him a last friendly slap on the shoulder. “Now, my friend, if you have given up on attempting to fight the inevitable… you should eat something.” Warmth lingers on Anthony’s shoulder even as Simon moves to sit next to Daphne, kissing her hand with a casual ease that scorches him just as thoroughly to witness. “Anthony. Come, join us.”

What other choice does he have? He sits; they eat together as if nothing is amiss, and he resigns himself to burn for just a little while longer.

* * *

The next few days pass by pleasantly enough, despite their rocky beginnings. Daphne plays pianoforte in the afternoons, Simon’s brandy is as good as it ever was, and not once does Anthony find himself an unwelcome third to their marital congress. In his more optimistic moods, he can almost convince himself he is happier this way.

A shame he is not often optimistic. His disappointment surrounding that particular matter is only more tinder piled atop the bonfire of reasons he should take his leave now, before it can happen again.

And so: he occupies himself increasingly with quitting the house entirely and walking the grounds for hours under some pretext or another. The scenery at Clyvedon _is_ lovely, and better than that, the gardens are sprawling. Benefits of a dukedom, Anthony supposes. He attempts to lose himself in neatly manicured walls of green, and only briefly considers the possibility that Daphne and Simon have likely made love on any given spot where he stands.

He wanders deeper into the hedgerows, where everything is a verdant smear across his vision and he can entertain the fantasy somehow it will hypnotize him like one of those mystics in the novels Eloise likes so much and wipe clean all these thoughts of Daphne’s eyes or Simon’s mouth.

As if he’s conjured the instruments of his own doom simply by thinking of them, Anthony spots Daphne and Simon seated together on a bench tucked away next to a small fountain. They’re clothed this time, and until he halves the distance between them he could be forgiven for thinking they have had the same idea he did and are merely taking in the unseasonably warm weather.

They are, after a fashion, but it is mortifyingly clear the weather is not their _main_ preoccupation. They are—he could not rightly call it making love, not with the way they strain against each other. No, he wouldn’t dare name what they are doing anything but _fucking_.

And Daphne is most certainly the one fucking Simon, to be sure. Her grip on his shoulders looks firm enough to bruise, but the true evidence is in the way Simon gazes up at her in wonder, breath huffing from his open mouth.

Anthony bites off a curse and slows his steps. He could stop walking—they haven’t noted his presence yet. He could turn back, into the comforting sea of green and the complete absence of standing by and watching his sister fuck his best friend and leave them none the wiser.

Simon leans up to yank at the top of Daphne's bodice until her breasts pop out. They're larger now that she's with child—Anthony is not sure when he began a thorough study of his sister's chest, but he knows they're rounder than they were a month ago the way he knows his own reflection. Simon captures one of her nipples between his teeth, and Anthony could no sooner look away from the trajectory of his mouth than he could sprout wings and fly. Daphne moans—that's what breaks him, he realizes when he runs the moment back in his mind over and over until he's worn grooves in its surface.

“ _Fuck_ me.” He doesn’t mean to speak the words aloud, but a heart’s dearest wish is impossible to take back once let free. Even children’s fairy stories know that.

Simon’s head jerks up with a wet pop Anthony will be hearing in his dreams, shattering his half-formed plan to duck behind a hedgerow and then immediately proceed to the kitchens to find something highly breakable and throw it with all his might at something unyielding.

“I…” Words refuse to assemble themselves into the neat, familiar rows deployed by a man not shaken to his very core. “A walk. I really did mean to avoid exactly this circumstance.” He gestures in the direction of the house and says plaintively, “I had thought you were inside.”

Simon’s grin tells Anthony his unintended double entendre has not passed unnoticed: Simon, of course, is inside _something_. Someone, to put a finer point on it. He has the good sense not to say it, only quirks a brow and continues to smile that wide, knowing grin of his. “Well, as you can see, we are not.”

Daphne has her head buried in Simon’s neck, but Anthony swears he hears her laugh. It must be panic. Or embarrassment, because she is a proper young lady and her brother is the perfect picture of an ass who is _still standing there_ , watching them.

“I… yes. Yes, well.” Simon is _still smiling_ , damn his eyes. “Shut it, Hastings. Daph, I…” What can he say to explain he’s dragged her into his own bizarre form of divine retribution? “I truly _am_ sorry.”

He flees back to the house, cursing himself and lovely fall days and skips supper to fuck his own hand thinking of the pink of Daphne’s nipples and the aggressive roll of her hips, overlaid with Simon’s damned knowing smile.

* * *

Daphne’s request to join her on a stroll around the gardens the next afternoon fills him with dread, but what can he say other than yes? He takes her arm and allows her to steer him down a familiar path. He purposefully does not look at what he can only term The Bench until she leads him directly to it and sits, pulling him down with her by their still-linked arms.

“I really did think you were in the house, sister.” He can think of no other reason she might bring him here other than to remind him he owes her yet another proper apology, and it is his duty to give it.

“Do not trouble yourself about it.” She shakes her head, sighing as if she is the elder between them. “You will make yourself ill, apologizing this much. I know you are not long accustomed to the habit.”

“Daphne, let me be serious. I did not mean to… I would not want to embarass you. These… incidents, they _will_ stop. Even if I have to cast myself into the lake with nary a Pall Mall ball in sight to explain what I jumped in to find.”

“There will be no need for that, I assure you. We are all adults, are we not? And I know full well you have too much experience of your own enough to be too scandalized.” She pats his arm comfortingly. “We forgot ourselves. I’m sure it won’t happen again.”

“Clearly.” He scans her face, seeking… he could not say what, but finds only pink cheeks and good humor. “All right, then. But you could try remembering yourselves the next time you venture outside your rooms in the dead of night, hmm? Spare your poor brother’s nerves.”

“Have your advancing years made your constitution so delicate already?”

“Hush, you. _Delicate_.” Anthony chuckles, pushing away the guilt in favor of the simple brotherly affection he owes her. “I must say, Daph, marriage suits you. Simon as well.” He nudges her shoulder with his own. “How fortunate your fool of an older brother never quite managed to ruin it for such a pair— _ow_!” He looks down at the perfect bootprint on the left calf of his breeches. “What did you do that for, you little hellion? I was trying to apologize for my attempts at keeping you from marital bliss. In case you’ve forgotten, the most reliable sources at hand have informed me I need constant practice in the fine art of rendering apologies.”

“Well, your sources have the right of it on _that_ matter.” Daphne’s bright tone is only slightly waspish at the edges. “As for why I kicked you… I kicked you for calling my brother a fool. I will allow that he can be fool _ish_ , but my beloved eldest brother Anthony? A fool? Not so. He is too good to me to be named a fool.”

“Daph…”

“Anthony.”

“You seem dead set on forgiving me all my transgressions, large and small.” The weight of how little he deserves her innocent devotion pushes against Anthony’s chest and makes his next breath harder to draw. He coughs and offers a weak jest to cover the lapse. “And they say women in your condition are particularly volatile… but here my ever-accommodating sister stands, putting paid to that notion.”

“Well, now you are being beastly for the sake of it,” Daphne laughs, raising one slippered foot again in mock anger. “You don’t want to know where the next kick will land, if you so dearly want a matched pair of my footprints to explain away.”

“I surrender, sister, in the face of such a terrible threat as that.” He kisses her cheek like a brother would all the while painfully aware that if he turned his head just so and she tilted hers, his lips would brush over hers in a decidedly non-fraternal way. The urge to do so is so strong he shivers with it.

“Anthony, are you all right? You have the oddest look on your face.” Daphne stares at him in concern, close enough her eyes fill his entire field of vision. “Brother?”

“I’m fine,” he forces out, cursing himself and stands with an abrupt force that disturbs the fine silk of Daphne’s skirt like a stone dropped in a lake. “Just took a sudden chill. Shall we move ourselves to somewhere a bit warmer?”

* * *

Five excruciatingly long days go by without any further incidents. Anthony begins to relax, and tells himself it that now he can be sure it will not happen a third time. This has all been nothing more than poor timing and coincidence conspiring against him, not his due burden for coveting a man _and_ his wife. On the sixth night, he feels safe enough to chance a late night excursion to find something to drink. Simon’s study is locked, and Anthony hasn’t an idea where the rest of Clyvedan’s liquor might be found. Milk, then. Even a fool can open a larder door, and it might serve to remind himself of life before Daphne met Simon, when he found it much easier to pretend the only reason it was difficult to approve a suitor had to do with the lack of men worthy to take her hand.

He dallies by his bedroom door, nearly turning away and doing without before he stiffens his shoulders and turns the handle. Daphne had all but promised him they would be more circumspect in their affections until his departure. Regardless, even if she and Simon felt so inclined as to indulge in the dead of night—outside the confines of their perfectly serviceable bed and thus safely away from his eyes—surely they would move that lovemaking somewhere more comfortable than the kitchens.

They would not, as it turns out. When he swings open the door to the larder, there they are. Daphne’s robe is open, Simon yet again on his knees before her, and now Anthony can see all her gowns have previously concealed.

“ _Christ_.” He swears viciously, too overwhelmed to watch his tongue. In the _larder_. Hardly circumspect of them, but perhaps he is not the one most qualified to complain.

“Anthony?” Daphne’s voice is rough. “We thought you would be asleep.”

He tries not to think overmuch on why she sounds that way, or why her glib acceptance of his presence sets his pulse racing. “Milk,” he says finally, wondering if perhaps the Lord is sending a new form of the plague of locusts to punish him for his transgressions, and how long it could possibly take to run to the lake at this time of night so that he might drown himself in it. “I needed…”

“Milk?” Simon offers, far too amused for a man in his position.

“Milk,” Anthony agrees, and flees without offering further elaboration or apology.

The bottom of the lake grows in appeal by the second. _Milk_. This cursed affliction of his seems to have cost him his wits, along with his already dubious claims to any remaining pretense at high moral standing.

Anthony snorts in disgust and prepares himself for another long night spent sleepless, trying not to picture Daphne’s breasts and the thick length of Simon’s cock pressed against her, or what they might do if he gave into his baser impulses and simply refused to quit the room the next time they put themselves on intimate display for him. That next time feels inevitable. He can feel it with increasing certainty down to the very core of his being; tonight was not his last brush with the flames. Perhaps this is truly his divinely granted punishment for wanting them. It seems plausible that he has already been sent where covetous men go, and his punishment is to spend eternity forced to watch Simon feast on his sister’s cunt and go thirsty if ever he wants a cool drink.

Milk, indeed. Damned if he’ll ever be able drink the stuff again at this rate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because it’ll bug me if I don’t mention it: I know the season was already a few days from finished in episode eight, but I’ve extended the timeline out because the image of poor grim-faced Anthony playing Sex Bodyguard (and giving Daph and Simon the first seeds of their Epic Campaign of Seduction) was too good to pass up.
> 
> Who knows if I will ever get around to doing Daphne and Simon's side of this, but rest assured it's mainly just them twinkling at each other and cackling about how smart and pretty they are. (And taking bets on how long it takes Anthony to crack and ask them what the actual fuck is going on, natch.)
> 
> The next chapter should be up by tomorrow night! I'm not _planning_ to take this one into anything more explicit than I already have, but I am habitually a filthy liar when it comes to my plans for fic. The rating may end up E by the time they all bang it out, but I figure if you're already in this particular handbasket with me that shouldn't be an issue.


	2. in which anthony's sideburns are that big because they are full of feelings, and somehow he is still up zero clue creek without a paddle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to Midnite String Quartet's cover of idontwannabeyouanymore, which provided a lot of mood music for me while I wrote this chapter. This got kinda feels-y, oops.

Anthony holds his glass up the light and watches the alcohol inside shift color, honey to amber and then back again, round and round and round. Feigning deep interest in the look of his brandy rather than its ability to render him insensible is a fantastic plan, really. Best one he’s had since he arrived. And all he need do for it to succeed is utter absolutely nothing of consequence, no matter what might be said, and never once meet Simon’s too-knowing stare.

He is, upon further consideration, almost certainly doomed.

“Damned fine stuff, Hastings.” Anthony takes a lengthy, appreciative sip regardless, lifting his glass in salute but not his gaze. A man must _try_ , even while staring right in the face of his obvious shortcomings and impending demise. He of all people knows that. “You always had a keen eye for spirits, even when we were boys.”

“Oh, so it’s to be Hastings once again, is it? I thought we had put any friction behind us these last few months. Shame, I had rather enjoyed being Simon again.”

“We _have_.” Guilt swaps his stomach and sours the warm glow. “Come now, you have to know I meant nothing by it.” He looks up, expecting to see the gentle recrimination in Simon’s voice reflected in his face.

“Ah, there he is.” Simon lifts his glass in a toast, a familiar smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. He displays no hurt, only triumph. “I thought you weren’t going to look at anything but that brandy until I gave into your stubborn whims and left you be.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”

“Of course. And are you also sure you wouldn’t rather have milk? It occurs to me you left unsatisfied last night.”

Anthony promptly chokes on his cognac and sputters like a man cast adrift at sea, only just beginning to sink. He brushes at the dampened cloth of his cravat and waistcoat with trembling fingers, cursing when that only manages to set the stain deeper. “You know, _Simon_ , it occurs to _me_ that it is a terrible shame I never was able to take a proper shot at you.”

“Is that so?”

“For what I now come to find was the establishing incident in an ongoing chain? For continuing to force me to witness you ravishing my sister?” Force is a bit heavy a term, but it is the one a long-suffering, indulgent older brother would choose. If only one of them were about, and not Anthony himself. That would solve everything. “I would say that warrants at least a graze. Or I could simply apply my fist to your gut, if you prefer.”

“As I am now the sister in question’s husband, I think that’s meant to be my part in this little tableau.”

“Not when you are the one tormenting me for it!”

“Anthony…” Simon shakes his head, giving Anthony a look he could not hope to parse, not when maintaining their peaceful balance of friendship and distance depends upon his obfuscation. “When you make it so easy to torment you, how could I resist doing so?”

“Ass.” There’s no heat to his words. Discussing this with Daphne is unthinkable, but perhaps he might allow himself a bit of honesty between men. “On my honor, Simon, it is beyond me _how_ it keeps occurring. Sister or not, I would not attempt to come between a man and his wife…”

Simon tips his glass, brow twitching in sardonic thanks. “To be sure.”

“The two of you might practice a bit more discretion, though,” Anthony continues, looking away from that elegant arch. Simon has always seen too much, and often at the exact wrong moment. His plan to simply never meet Simon’s eyes having failed so inescapably leaves him little room for error. Better to seem vaguely put out than at all reluctant to change their present set of circumstances.

“Says the guest.”

“The _invited_ guest. Wanted, if Daph’s letter can still be believed. Downright needed.”

“Hear, hear. The way you carry on, a body begins to suspect we marched you here with a pistol to your back.”

“As long as I don’t need to worry you will kill me in my bed with the pistol no one needed put to my back to get me here…” 

“Oh, I shouldn’t think you need to worry about that. Shooting you would make a dreadful mess, don’t you think?”

“Quite.”

“So there you have it. I simply will have to find something else to do instead.”

To do where Anthony wants to ask, but he is not so in his cups as to not follow the overall thread of Simon’s wit. Something else to do in his _bed_. “I do appreciate it. I would hate to cause any distress for your maids.”

“See that you don’t.” They lapse into comfortable silence. Finally, Simon sighs. “Why did you come, Anthony? Daph was sure you would agree if she asked, but I have to admit I thought you might refuse us.”

“Daph worries, she always has. She was always eager to become a lady too fast, and after father… well.” Anthony clears his throat, pushing past the memory that longs to overcome him. When mother had been grieving, it seemed only natural Daphne step forward as Anthony had, no matter her comparitive youth. She was the eldest daughter, he the eldest son. He had always fancied that a bond they shared, apart from the rest of the brood. It placed on their shoulders a twinned set of responsibilities they did not speak of, but mutually understood all the same. If Daphne requires the moon on a string now that she is preparing to bring forward a child of her own, Anthony will do his best to tear it down for her. She knows that, and thus understands perfectly his company is hardly too grand an ask, in the face of what she deserves. “If my being here puts her mind at ease...”

“It does.”

“Then I suppose my time here is a price I will gladly pay.”

“Oh, I see. A price to pay, are we?”

“Again, you know that is not what I meant.”

“Have you considered that she did not invite you simply to reassure herself?” Simon lifts a foot to prod at Anthony’s calf, and he almost does lose the thread now, transfixed at a glance by the long, capable line of his leg. “That perhaps she simply desires and enjoys your continued company? And not solely Daphne. I _have_ missed you, Anthony. I did not leave because there was no one I might have wanted to stay for.”

He is sure he makes a noise of faint agreement, but to what Anthony could not say. Lightheaded in a way that has nothing to do with drink, he searches for adequate words to return the kindness. When Simon had hared off alone to try and find a place free of his father’s memory, they had been—it had been a simpler time. He cannot deny he might have waited, had he been asked, but they had exchanged no promises that might preclude Simon’s long absence. Anthony would tell him so, but to even mention the way they had once known each other feels uncannily like stepping into a snare.

In the end, he simply nods and sets any impulse towards a return confession aside to rest with his other cherished childhood fancies. “Clearly, it all worked out for the best. You seem happy now, Simon, and I am glad for it. You were not happy when you left. ”

“She makes me happy.” He smiles a private smile, one Anthony does not know. It belongs to Daphne—perhaps he ought to be jealous. He would have been jealous, with Siena. In place of jealousy he finds only an echo of Simon’s own happiness, for how could he be anything but happy for the two souls he loves most? It is what they deserve, and what he wishes for them. All other complications pale in the face of that. “And most importantly, I have found, we make each other happy.”

“As I have seen ample evidence to prove your point, I will only offer my continued heartfelt congratulations and hope you find less travelled venues in which to render the physical expression of that happiness. Perhaps your own bed? An unadventurous choice, I know, but I do think perhaps the correct one.”

“You only say that because you are not married. No, I cannot be held accountable for treating my beautiful wife as tenderly as I should. I seem to recall you demanding I promise such things, in fact. You were… very firm about it.”

“Do not _gloat_ , Simon, it has always been one of your less attractive habits. While I am doing my best to render no judgment on the activities, there remains the consistent matter of the _venue_. If only you could adjust the _venue_.” The wild unreality of life since he arrived at Clyvedon has undone him, he is certain of it. How else could he find himself discussing the finer details of a marriage he is not a part of—private, _intimate_ details, details he should have no desire to hear. How else could he open his mouth and ask for more? “It isn’t… harmful? For the child, I mean.”

“Not yet. And later, when she’s fuller with child… well.” Anthony goes breathless, pinioned by the long sigh Simon releases, more an avalanche’s rumble than a whisper of wind. “We’ll have to be more careful, I suppose.”

“So you can… even when she’s…” _Mad_. Anthony is running _mad_. He cannot help but picture it. Simon would cradle her as gently as he would a bird’s egg, perhaps rest his head on her lush breasts. He might even suckle from her in a erotic inversion of childhood, himself. Men at the brothels have mentioned such pleasures available for purchase if a man knew who to ask, but Anthony had not seen the appeal until this very moment.

“Oh, yes. I made sure.” Simon’s next breath is audible, ragged around the edges as his control frays just a fraction.

“ _Ah_.” Even after all these years, Anthony knows perfectly well what that sound means. He could attempt to put it out of mind—he has on occasion tried, but his very _body_ remembers it. There is nothing to be done about that, it seems. “Right. Well. That is… _fuck_.”

“All I can. I think you know that.” Simon gives Anthony a sly look he is too drunk and stunned to parse. “She even tastes different now. I had not realized that would happen as the rest of her body changes in ways I can see.”

“That is… I do not… you should not…” Words fail him, entirely, and he can feel the telltale flood of tight itching spread across his features, a reliable signal he has gone a deep, unmanly red. “Good _God_ , Simon.”

“Oh, do not play blushing virgin with me. It’s not as if we never shared tales of our women, before. Or,” he adds with a lingering look, “shared the women themselves.”

“Those women were not my _sister_ , Simon. It is not… not _proper_.”

“I suppose I cannot argue with you about that.” He pours them both another glass. “We shall have to see about drinking enough to distract me from the matter.”

“ _Please_.” The fire has nearly banked itself, now, and in the dim glow of the embers the planes of Simon’s face catch those last bits of light and make _him_ glow, a burnished gleam he can do nothing but name beautiful. “You said you both enjoy my company.” Once opened, the dam bursts and Anthony cannot pretend he has not said it. He presses on helplessly. “Enjoy, you said. Not enjoyed. Which means now. As I am.”

“As opposed to…”

“I—well.”

“What is it? Tell me.” Simon leans forward, eyes sharp and gentle all at once. “You once told me everything. Do so again, if only for a moment.”

“It used to be _easier_.”

“Try,” Simon encourages. “It might do you good to unburden yourself.”

“I used to be easier, too." An heir is just an heir, after all, until he is something else entirely, adrift and unable to seek the wisdom of any of his predecessors. He thinks back to their earliest days at Eton, when his future as the Viscount Bridgerton was assured but distant, and his shoulders unused to the weight of a title and all the responsibilities that follow. "To... enjoy, I suppose. You enjoyed me. Our fellows enjoyed me, my family enjoyed me… I dimly recall enjoying myself, now and again. That is why what you said struck me. That you still do...”

“Anthony—”

“It does not matter, Simon. We do not need to discuss it any further.” Anthony twitches his mouth into something he must simply hope will pass as a smile and forge ahead all the same. “It must be the drink. Makes me maudlin, I'm afraid. We shall forget it all in the morning.”

“If you insist.”

“I do.” The disappointment in Simon’s voice is easy to hear. Anthony cannot bear it, just as he cannot bear another moment of stolen sympathy. “I also insist you leave me to it. Go spend the time you have with my beautiful sister, or I shall have to call you out again and that would leave all three of us unhappy.”

“Anthony—”

“Go.” Simon does not rise, and Anthony sighs. “I will be fine. Daph must be waiting for you, and I…” What can he say? There is nothing _to_ say. “This will pass. It always does. Go to her.”

His attempt not to feel bereft when Simon surrenders and does as he bids is, fittingly, entirely unsuccessful.

* * *

Simon does not mention their conversation in the morning, nor any morning after that. There is a certain careful way he handles their interactions now that Anthony simultaneously chafes at and longs to lean into, but it is easy enough to pretend he does not note any particular difference. Daphne is unchanged, ever her charming, utterly immovable self. She orders him this way and that, nags him about every morsel he does or does not upon his plate as if he were the one with child, and entirely refuses to leave him be when he reminds her grown men have long been able to choose and cut their own meat if they wish. Unless this is her clever form of punishment, he cannot think Simon spoke to her of Anthony’s lapse and the scandalous details that passed between them in Simon’s study. She could not treat him so fondly and dote on him this way if she knew.

There have been no further incidents since he found them defiling the larder. Regret and relief twine within him until he cannot tell one from the other, twin vines climbing a trestle crafted from all the things Anthony wants and knows cannot be. The fast-approaching end of his stay taunts and soothes him with this refrain: _only a few days more_. A few days more, and then he can join the family at Aubrey Hall and put this fever dream behind him.

“We have received a letter from Eloise, brother.” Daphne settles herself gingerly into the chair next to him.

“We?” Anthony’s stomach lurches. He has the most foreboding feeling he knows what she will say even before she begins to share the contents of Eloise’s letter.

“Well, I suppose it is mostly for me—but she has thrown your plans to leave us into chaos.”

“And how has she done that, exactly?”

“There is some sort of pest outbreak at the house. Fleas, I believe, though Eloise says she thinks there may be bedbugs as well. She seems to be somewhat unsure as to the distinction between the two.”

“Dear God.” Sweat begins to prickle uncomfortably at the back of his neck. “What happened?”

“She says Hyacinth found a cat and attempted to shelter it in her room without telling mother, and it escaped when a maid opened the door, and then there’s something about pouring flour on the ground… I have to admit I do not understand that part of the letter, given I cannot think of a single reason cats might be lured in by flour.”

“To find and follow the cat’s tracks, to be sure,” Anthony says, hearing his voice dimly, as if it is coming from someone trapped at the bottom of a well. “Our siblings have a certain... flexibility of mind. What else does the letter say?”

“Right. In any case, it seems Aubrey Hall will no longer serve as a suitable destination when you leave us.”

“I shall simply have to return to London, then.”

“Oh, no. I could not bear the thought of you alone in town while the rest of the family enjoys the country.”

“If what Eloise says is true, I doubt very much they are enjoying themselves.” He cannot stay. He shall find himself in Bedlam or Hell before long if he does not depart Clyvedon as planned, that much has been true from the moment he arrived. "I shall return to town, sister, and you shall have your privacy back as we had planned. I can survive on my own, I assure you."

“Anthony, please.”

“Daph—”

“Please. Please, stay? It would make me so happy, brother. I do not wish to lose your company again so soon.”

After all the friction and the pain of suffering under her deserved scorn, he cannot say no. He wilts, slumping back in his chair and envisioning the future rolled out before him. It is a wicked tapestry he would rather not display openly, and yet... "If that is truly what you want, I will stay. You have a tender heart, sister, and I benefit greatly from it, but I would not like to disrupt your happiness for the sake of pity.”

“It is nothing of the sort. I simply wish to enjoy my brother’s company.”

“Then it is settled, I suppose. I will write to the family and tell them that I plan to extend my stay." He is sunk, looking into her joyful eyes. Anthony could nearly believe she puts special emphasis on enjoy, pressing the word towards him as if to ensure he cannot escape its weight. A ridiculous notion, of course. For that to be true she would need to know why it might matter. If she knew that… she would not wish to suffer his presence a moment longer, if she knew. She could not. “Until Aubrey Hall is no longer under siege, of course.”

“Naturally.”

They finish breakfast with no other difficulties, but still Anthony cannot escape a notion that hardly portends well: if he is to be installed at Clyvedon for the foreseeable future and dismissed only at Daphne’s whim, he perhaps has more in common with Hyacinth’s new pet than he would care to admit. Fleas and all.

* * *

Eloise’s letter breaks the lull in incidents. Anthony does not know what he expected—he _does_ , however, know what he hoped, as well as what he dreaded. They are one and the same, which is likely why after such a long run, it happens again. Anthony has grown too comfortable and agreed to extend his stay and thus prolong temptation, and more temptation than he can stomach is his dubious reward.

They’re to take tea in Clyvedon’s grandest receiving room today. Daph had insisted, something about missing her earliest chances to practice being a hostess. Where they drank tea did not seem to Anthony to change anything about that, but it was a simple enough thing to agree to, when she asked.

Now, it is not simple. It is anything but simple.

Daphne’s hair spills from its pins, draping over the back of the settee where it is not held tight in Simon’s fist. Right in front of tea and a full plate of biscuits, without thought for their complete lack of involvement in all this or the increasingly precarious state Anthony’s sanity.

He cannot help but note how long her neck looks with Simon putting her on unknowing display. If it were possible he would draw a long breath to steady himself, but air does not come in steady pulses as it should. He cannot look away from Daphne’s throat; pale and stretched out, waiting for…

Like an animal exiting from a pond, Anthony gives himself a shake. Daphne is waiting for nothing. She has her husband. They have _each other_. They need nothing else.

“Well, I will have to make a note to avoid that settee in the future.” At least his ability to push through numb hysteria and make conversation is improving as the fragile string his sanity hangs upon on frays, strand by strand. “You asked me to stay, and stay I shall, but this…” _Has to stop_. The words turn to boulders on his tongue and sink back down, too deep to call back. “I am beginning to think you two find being discovered somehow exciting, or have developed a spontaneous ability to _entirely_ _forget that I am here_.”

“Oh no, Anthony. We have not forgotten that you are here for a single moment since you arrived.” Simon noses into the thick fall of Daphne’s hair. “Have we, darling?”

“That would be quite impossible, I should think," Daphne agrees, sounding all together too comfortable with their ongoing predicament. "Particularly in moments like this one."

“And what, exactly, does _that_ mean?” He directs the question at the gilded embellishments on the table two inches to the right of Daphne’s entirely uncovered thigh rather than his naked sister, but he can tell she is looking at him. He cannot make heads or tails of why he could swear on his life her gaze makes the ground shift, ever so slightly, and entirely changes the terrain upon which they stand.

“It means, Anthony, that you are right there.” Simon’s timely interruption of the fantastical turn his thoughts have taken saves Anthony from the panic analysis of the ground’s betrayal of expectation would surely induce. He stretches lazily, and Anthony cannot pry his gaze from the picture they paint together if asked to do so with a pistol pressed to his back. “We could hardly ignore you.”

“Yes. I shall go, then.” Daphne begins to say something as he makes a hasty retreat to the door. “Do not trouble yourselves, just… carry on.”

* * *

Daphne and Simon cast each other looks all throughout the dinner that evening, having a conversation he cannot hope to translate. Food holds no real appeal, but it is better than attempting to make stilted conversation as they sit there, speaking a language he does not.

Anthony is pretending fervent interest in his peas when Daphne finally speaks up.

“Anthony… if I may ask… and you must know I only do so because I care about you, and I _do_ want to see you happy.”

His peas lay forgotten, now, in favor of dread’s all-encompassing grip. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“Your opera singer,” Daphne says, and Anthony flinches as though she has struck him. He would rather she had done so. He can withstand the impact of her fists. Has done so before, many times. Confessing what transpired the night of Daphne’s ball is something else entirely.

“Daph,” Simon warns.

“It’s alright, Simon. Let her ask.” If not now, he _will_ tell her. Daphne has always been relentless when she sets her mind upon uncovering a secret. He nods, a sharp jerk he cannot quite soften into something less pained. “Siena. Her name was Siena.”

“Siena. Yes. I know you… that is to say, Simon mentioned you had parted.”

“He did, did he?” Simon does not seem properly apologetic; just as well, he had been right about Siena as well, the night they spoke of it. Daphne did not need to be told, only perhaps given confirmation the dalliance ended. Everyone had known, all along. There is no purpose to attempting further concealment, and he cannot summon up the energy to try regardless. “Well, Simon was not wrong. Our arrangement has ended, yes.”

“You did the right thing, brother," she pats his hand in what Anthony supposes is meant to be a gesture of comfort, but he cannot feel her touch. He is numb, cut off, and though she does not know it, Daphne ensures the ground under his feet pitches and heaves in his own private maelstrom. "It is clear you cared for her, but if she was willing to let you end your relationship, perhaps it was not meant to be.”

He cannot help but laugh. It feels ugly, torn from his chest by an invisible hand. “Is that what he told you? No, that… that was not what happened. Not in the end. I _had_ tried to let her go. But I could not stay away, and then…” He breaks off and takes a desperate sip of wine, dreading the moment when he must lower the glass and admit the depths of his inadequacies and humiliation. It comes too fast to fashion a believable lie, so the truth is what spills from his lips in short, chopped sentences that slice at his tongue with their sharp edges. “We resumed our arrangement just after the last fight, but it did not take. You should be relieved, I suppose. I was going to cause a terrible scandal. Worse than anything even Eloise could manage, I should think.”

“Anthony, what were you going to do?”

“I invited her to your ball, Daphne. I was going to introduce her to _mother_.” Daphne’s wet, shocked inhale shames him. He cannot stand to look at her and see the recrimination for what he had nearly put them all through. The words pour from him in a pained torrent. “I told her I was a viscount. That my sister was married to a duke, and that… whatever might happen, I would protect her. That I… I did not care what the ton said, I only…”

“Cared for her?” Daphne finishes for him. He cannot look at her. “But she was not at the ball.”

“No. She was not.”

“And that was why you were not at the ball,” Daphne says slowly, as if she is slowly adjusting the angle of a picture frame to suit the room. “Did something happen?”

“I went to find her. I thought, even if she was not ready for a ball… I asked if we might be together, Daph. Properly. I brought flowers,” he adds, feeling the thick bundle of stems again in his fist until he forces his hand to relax and lay flat on the table. “I’m sure I looked quite the devoted suitor.”

“Then what—”

“Siena, as it turned out, did not face the same difficulties I did in letting go. She did not want to be with me. And she already has a new protector. So everyone has landed on their feet, I suppose.” He clears his throat, finding his wineglass empty when he reaches for it again, hoping to wash away the stubborn lump that chokes off his good sense along with his breath. “I did not make the right choice, Daph. Rather the opposite.”

The thick, cloying perfume of flowers fills his nostrils again suddenly, as though the bouquet is again clenched in his fist. Bile rises at the back of his throat, just as had when he realized he would not be enough for Siena, as he could not be enough for his family.

Forever falling short of the mark when it is most important he rise to meet it _does_ seem to be his fate.

He surges upwards violently, sending his glass crashing to the ground when he clips it in his uncontrolled ascent and shattering the fine craftsmanship irreparably. The shards crunch under his boots as he backs away from the table, stumbling over his own feet in his need to escape this room and the lingering scent of flowers. “You will have to excuse me. I—you will have to excuse me.”

“Anthony!”

“Let him go,” he hears Simon reply, loud enough he must know Anthony will able to hear. His words sit somewhere between warning and promise. “Let him collect himself. I will find him later and speak to him about it then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally this chapter was not supposed to be an ode to Anthony's daddy/self-esteem/mortality issues and then Jonathan Bailey gave all those interviews and wrecked my plans, that's my man & etc. 
> 
> Plus, he and Simon never _did_ get to fully hash out all the mean shit they said to each other and that is a crying shame. Guys, my feelings about Anthony and Simon are a PROBLEM, now. I am in the stage of my obsession where I obsess over microexpressions and cry about how Anthony shakes his head while Simon reads him to filth because he can't quite believe Simon is yanking out all the most horrible, terrifying things he says to himself when he is feeling shitty, and how Simon knows Anthony so well he can push exactly the right buttons in the right order to make him explode. It is a perfect ten when it comes to angst, even the Russian judge agrees.
> 
> Like I said. They are a problem.
> 
> Also! This was originally going to be a three parter. It is now a four parter, followed by an epilogue that is literally just five different sex scenes and every pregnancy kink related tag smashed together in a trenchcoat. I couldn't make the really dirty stuff fit in the story proper without disrupting the flow, but that does not mean I will not staple it on the end like a less wholesome genre-standard baby epilogue.


	3. in which anthony needs to build a few extra shelves so there's enough room to store his many issues, but at least he has realized coincidence ceases to explain this insane fuckery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All aboard the feels express, toot toot & etc.

Knowing Simon would eventually find him does not mean Anthony need make it easy on him. There are no lack of small, tucked away places to hide on an estate as large as Clyvedon, extending his window of escape out considerably, unless Anthony is very, very unfortunate.

...given his luck of late, perhaps not something to count out as anything but the most likely scenario. Ironic, that it must fall to Daphne to provide his saving grace, all ill fortune aside. Like as not Simon will need to console her before making a thorough job of any search, and that should serve well enough to delay him on its own. Daphne always had hated causing true upset, even as a child. She excelled at the sort of rollicking family debates that came naturally with being a Bridgerton, they all did or risked being entirely lost in the scrum, but at her core Daph did everything she possibly could to ensure the balance of their little world spun on ever-unchanging in its steady, even keel.

Before he’d allowed mother’s well-deserved censure to turn his head about and stumbled into Berbrooke’s utterly unsuitable way, it was the reason Anthony gave himself when he had found too many flaws in each man who dared glance her way. He knows now that was hardly the entirety of the matter, but he would like to hope his less honorable motivations did not signify then, as they should not now.

Daphne knew she had upset him; she would need holding, comfort. The sort provided by a husband, and only a husband.

Anthony takes another long pull off the bottle he’d swiped, green glass catching the moonlight and making the liquid inside shift in nauseating waves when he tilts it gently back and forth for the simple pleasure of disrupting calm waters with his turbulence.

It would not take long to reach the lake now, if he still had a mind to throw himself in it. Marking the possibility and brightening with black humor, he settles himself to the task of achieving insensibility before Simon comes to pry him away from his deserved isolation. The lack of dinner to soak up his wine would help matters along considerably, but it _was_ only wine. The wisest course of action was to apply himself judiciously, and without haste.

As portended by his prior luck and to his extreme displeasure, the bob of an approaching lantern heralds Simon’s approach too soon into Anthony’s efforts to accomplish anything save the beginnings of a sour stomach and enhanced melancholy.

“I do not want to talk about Siena, Hastings.” Best to set the terms of engagement immediately and firmly.

“Agreed, we can avoid the subject entirely,” Simon lowers himself to the ground beside him with a soft grunt and peers through the darkness to take in Anthony’s current disheveled state, “and yet it will not spare you this conversation with me. Anthony, are you well?”

“Entirely.” Anthony gestures with the bottle at their surroundings. “In a setting such as this? At this hour? How could I be anything but well. No, clearly I am perfectly content.”

“...you are entirely foxed, is what you are. Have you been sitting here this whole time?”

“Not the _whole_ time. I had to assess my escape routes before I settled on the proper course.” Suddenly self-conscious, Anthony mounts a useless attempt to shove his hair off his forehead and arrange himself into some vague assemblage of proper order. “And I am only a little foxed…” Disgusted, he gives up on straightening a cravat already rendered irreversibly flat. His starch has gone out in more ways than one, it seems. “Not entirely. Still only a few steps down the path to insensibility, I assure you.”

“Oh, only a few steps?” Simon says, not even doing him the favor of pretending it might be so. “Stand then, and show me those steps.”

Anthony considers the matter of the many impediments that loom between himself and such an effort to prove his continued state of near-sobriety. “Perhaps a bit more than a few steps,” he concedes. “Call it somewhere around the middle, then. Nothing I cannot handle, I assure you. You should be returning to bed.”

“And you should be coming back inside, with me. You will catch a chill and I do not believe the stress would improve my wife’s confinement. No, I suppose there is nothing to be done for it,” Simon says briskly, as though they have come to a shared decision. “I have no choice but to escort you back inside with me. Though I confess, it will be easier to accomplish that if you follow willingly.”

“Simon—”

“Anthony, look at me.”

“I should really rather not.” He tugs at the grass with restless fingers. It is truly unfair how finely-crafted Simon’s features are. It had ever been such, even when they were boys.

“ _Anthony_ ,” Simons repeats himself, each precisely shaped syllable a command.

“ _Tyrant_. You have taken the title entirely too well for my comfort.” He lifts his face from his previous thorough examination of each crease in his breeches. Perhaps Simon will ascribe the red in his eyes to overindulging and leave it there. “Well then, Your Grace, I have looked at you. What ever shall you do with me now?”

“Something _is_ amiss, Anthony, do not pretend otherwise. I wish you would tell me what it is.”

“A great many things in this world are amiss, Simon. My meager portion of misfortune is hardly worth speaking about.”

“If it is enough to have you out here at this time of night,” Simon points out with strained equanimity, “surely it is enough to be worth _mentioning_.”

“Do you know, I liked you more before Daph got her hands on you, made you…” Anthony gestures at Simon’s still-patient mien, rendered inarticulate by a surge of renewed aggravation.

“Made me?” Simon repeats. “Made me… what, exactly?”

“ _This_. Ordering me to simply _speak_ about what is wrong, as if that will somehow change the substance and shape of my troubles.” The arm he flings out to embellish his point knocks Simon solidly in the chest, but even such a collision cannot be allowed to derail the intricacies of how _terribly_ unjust it is that he is surrounded on all sides, penned in by ruthless sincerity. “You used to enjoy avoiding such discussions as much as I do, Hastings. I always appreciated that about you a great deal. Your newly domesticated self is not so accommodating, and I find it vastly less charming.”

“Come _inside_ , Anthony.” Simon stands and holds a hand in front of Anthony’s face, glaring insistently until he takes it. “If nothing else, let me get you somewhere more comfortable to needle at me until I let you drink your sorrows away in peace.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t mind a chair,” Anthony allows begrudgingly now that he is caught in Simon’s orbit, ever more conscious of the damp now that the temperature is beginning to plummet.

Reluctantly Anthony allows himself to hauled up and steered in whatever direction Simon sees fit, too tired to back away from the arm placed around his shoulders. The walk back to the house seems to Anthony to stretch on infernally long, much longer than the walk to his attempted sanctuary had. His steps are clumsier, in any case, and he cannot flatter himself their slowed pace has no connection to the semi-liquid state of his knees. Simon’s arm comes down to rest around his waist the third time he stumbles, and Anthony finds himself glad for the excuse to be held as he is for the small lantern Simon holds aloft in his other hand, clearing the darkness that would have obscured his own solitary attempt at finding the way, had he refused his help.

All too soon they reach the flat ground leading up to the estate. Anthony thinks surely now Simon will pull away and he will walk the rest of the way alone, but the arm around his midsection stays as firm as it had been even after they enter Clyvedon’s doors. Simon hands the lantern off to a servant with a murmur of gratitude, and steers Anthony to his study.

He sits him down and settles down in the chair beside him. “Now, tell me what’s wrong,” he repeats.

“Simon…” It seems he has already picked up more than a few tricks from Daphne, the bastard. Anthony sighs, passing a hand over his face in resignation. No avoiding _any_ of it, then. Not his company or the ugly conversation itself. He cannot withstand the pressure, not when so much of his turncoat soul wants to lay his head in Simon’s lap and confess his sins. “I surrender.”

“You need not surrender. Only…” He inhales, picking his next words with visible care. “Unburden yourself of whatever weary load you seem to think you must carry alone.”

“Married life has made you a poet, it seems.” Simon refuses the bait, damn him. A headache begins to gather behind Anthony’s eyes. There truly are so many things he might say, all of them true. The simplest pain to expose seems wise, thought he aches all the same to speak of it. “You were right.”

“I am right about a great many things,” Simon gently teases. “What exactly was I right about this particular time?”

“What you said at the club. You were right about me. About the many ways in which I have failed. My duties, the family, the insult I have done to my father’s memory, the mortification it would have caused him…” He swallows around a throat that burns as though freshly scoured with lye. “Your accounting of the matter was rather exhaustive, I believe. Nearly a full mastery of my various deficiencies. Siena more than provided what you missed,” Anthony raises a warning hand, “though I still do not want to speak about her, and I want to speak even less of her addenda.” The pain of revealing his fruitless, dashed expectations is too fresh on already barely healed wounds. “There. I have unburdened myself, and now the thing is done.”

“It is _far_ from done. Not if you have held words uttered in anger so close to your heart all this time.” All the humor drains from Simon’s face. “Anthony, I said many things that night. Things that were meant to hurt you, as you hurt me. You cannot think—”

“I should not have said what I did,” Anthony says over what exactly it is he must not think, unable to bear the apology. “I shamed myself that night. I was… well. I was angry, and purposefully cruel.”

“We both were,” Simon insists. “If I accept your apology, I see no reason you should not follow suit.”

“You only spoke the truth, Simon, unsparing delivery notwithstanding. No, you had the right of it. I will never surpass the legacy of my father, never…” _Live past it_ , he nearly says, but that is another of the many potential confessions he cannot give. “I am in his shadow. And I am sure he is _entirely_ disgusted with what I have done thus far to try to live up to it.”

“Oh, Anthony.” There is a deep tenderness in Simon’s voice, one Anthony cannot bear any more than he could Simon’s apology. “I _am_ sorry.”

“For what? I told you. You only spoke the truth.” The humiliating sting of tears pricks at his eyes. Shutting them gently, he counts his breaths like the tick of a clock until they recede. “He was brilliant at it, you know? My father. All of it. Marriage, the finances, our family… Never seemed to falter. Never seemed to doubt himself, never hesitated. He would have taken to you immediately. Brought you up to snuff far faster than I did, sorted you and Daph out when you needed sorting. Avoided all this… mess.” The last, desperate sip in his glass burns all the way down. “My mess, I suppose.”

“Anthony.” Simon starts to speak. Whatever words he might have said die on a frustrated sigh. “Have you spoken to Daphne about this?”

Anthony only shrugs in answer. He had not breathed a word of his doubts to a soul, not about any of it. Until Simon drove each careful, precise word into his heart they had subsided in shadow and could be pretended away, if he gave it enough effort.

“You have not,” Simon says slowly, more to himself, and for a moment the tension between them rises so high Anthony thinks Simon might seize him by the shoulders and shake him. “No, of course you have not.” He makes no move to follow through on his aborted surge of energy, only rubs the hand he raised over his jaw, exasperation clear in the tense lines of his body. “No, it would not occur to you to do that. The Viscount Bridgterton must carry his burdens alone.”

“What does that mean?” Peevish, Anthony makes to stand.

“It means you need to speak to your sister about the things you have just told me, Anthony.” Simon pushes him back down, using his longer reach to good advantage. “Trust me. Unfold yourself to her and see what comes of it.” The grip Simon keeps on Anthony’s shoulder is gentle and he cannot help but allow himself the comfort he still takes its steady heat. “Enjoy your brandy.”

“I do believe it is your brandy, Simon, not mine.” Absently, he pats Simon’s no longer restraining hand. Time freezes for one singular, delicate moment, and then Anthony yanks his own hand back as though burned. Chuckling weakly, he attempts to play the moment off. “And I seem to have finished my glass regardless.”

“So you have. Shall I get you more?”

Anthony considers the matter, and shakes his head finally with regret. “I don’t know that I should.”

“Bed yourself, then?” Simon suggests, casual as though it is a thought newly occurred and not his stated goal all along.

“I think I might continue to sit for a spell, drink or no. That is, if you do not mind lending me the use of your study just a short while longer.”

“Take as long as you need. If I can offer it, anything I have is yours.” He gives Anthony’s shoulder a gentle shake. “As you well know.”

“Hmm,” Anthony hums, noncommittal. “Tell Daph I apologize for spoiling her dinner?”

“I can tell you now she will not agree with that assessment of the proceedings, but the message I can relay, regardless.”

“Her agreement is not necessary, only that she knows I _am_ sorry.”

“She will know.” Simon stands, stretching his neck until a small pop sounds. “I’ve grown stiff, sequestered away in the country. We shall have to go a round soon, or Will’s tender mercies will surely undo me when we are next in London.”

“I would be more than amenable to that.” At this angle, seated below him, Anthony cannot stop the _ridiculous_ , besotted thought: candlelight catches like gold dust on Simon’s eyelashes. Gold to Daphne’s silver, sun to moon— Anthony colors, irritation rising in a wave. The thought be damned, _he_ is ridiculous. He is besotted, and it does none of them a whit of good. “You have always been a good friend to me, Simon. The best, in fact.” Gold on Simon’s lashes or no, that much Anthony can swear on his very life.

“And I might say the same to you.” Simon finally releases his grip and heads for the door. “Good night, Anthony.”

“Good night.”

Anthony stays seated long after the candles sputter and flicker out and the last of their meager added warmth leaves the room, but the place where Simon laid his palm still burns, like a furnace fed a steady stream of coal.

* * *

When he opens his door in the morning, Daphne is waiting anxiously outside. He had half-expected she might hover until he woke, particularly given the late hour. It was their way, and there is something reassuring in knowing it is _still_ their way, even now that she is married and soon to bring forth a child.

“Daph, I should not have,” he begins, but she cuts him off before the apology can form on his lips.

“It is not your place to beg my forgiveness, but mine to beg yours. I should not have been so unthinking. I did not mean to remind you of such unpleasant things.” She rushes towards him with all haste and falters with a step yet left between them, clearly anticipating a cold reception to her customary embrace.

“Of course you did not, sister.” He opens his arms to invite her closer and the resulting impact of her small body crashing into his drives the air from his lungs in a soft grunt. “Shh. None of that, Daphne. You have done nothing wrong.” The arms she loops around his middle crush him in a vice grip, as if afraid he might bolt at any moment like a horse not yet broken to the saddle. “I am not angry, sister, and I would not have you imagine me so. You only wished to understand what happened. You must not let it rest heavy on your mind. I have certainly not.”

“Truly? You have not?” She searches his face for any sign of falsehood, but at least in this matter he has nothing to conceal.

“On my honor.” Anthony allows himself a few long moments in her arms before untangling them both and stepping a respectful distance away. “Now. There _must_ be a better place for this than the hallway.”

Fresh air might do more than a spot of good, but the mid-morning light is still too bright for the gardens after a night soaked in Simon's best vintage. The library’s large windows make him wince when they enter, but when Daphne had suggested Simon’s study in deference to his own delicate condition, as she’d put it, the library had been the first alternative that sprang to his tongue. Taking it back and choosing somewhere less sunny would have meant revealing his motivation to be avoiding the study, and not a desire for the library itself. That would mean finding a reason beyond his need to avoid dark, intimate spaces with either Hastings, and all that might imply.

All his best intentions are thwarted when she pulls him down on the same long padded bench, hidden away among the stacks.

“There, now you will stop wincing. I cannot understand why you would not take my suggestion and use Simon’s study where we might draw the curtains, but this corner is the darkest in the room,” she says, blushing in a way Anthony would do better to ignore. “Ahem. Thank _goodness_ you were not angry with me. I was so worried—I know you do not like to discuss such things.”

“For you, dear sister, I find myself willing to ignore such general truths on a great many fronts.” Daphne rests her head on his shoulder and twines their fingers together, Anthony is content to simply let her take comfort in such paltry offerings as he can offer, the simple quiet lost somewhere between father’s death and this last season a balm to a deep, unceasing ache. He counts each second, the inexorable inhale and exhale of time slipping past a moment meant to be savored. When it ends, as each such moment must and Daphne sits upright again, he conceals any disappointment and smiles as Benedict might, thinking on what their most expressive brother might say. “Now, we shall have no more of these tears. Chin up, my dearest sister. Your sweet apology—however unnecessary it may have been—has slain my dragons and beaten the gloom back from me for the moment.”

“ _Do_ be serious, Anthony. You sound like Benedict,” she scolds. But she _does_ smile, and it makes a bit of theatricality worth the small effort. “Simon said you wanted to speak with me about an important matter? Not simply to beg forgiveness, though he also said you would refuse to admit an apology from you was not warranted.”

“Interestingly enough, he told me you would refuse to accept such an apology. He seems to have us both dead to rights, your husband.” Uncomfortably so. Briskly, he adds, “Simon says a great many things. Some of them even appear to have quite the ring of truth.”

“So you do _not_ wish to speak with me?” Daphne crosses her arms over chest and lifts her chin. “Anthony, I do so wish you would not speak in riddles. It is most unlike you.”

“I am not _trying_ —it is simply that,” he stops, taking a fortifying breath and starting anew. “Daph. I wish…” This latest attempt fails just as surely as its fellows.

“You wish what?”

“Nothing. Forgive me, it was just a passing thought.”

“Riddles again,” she scolds, shaking her head. “Whatever secrets you hold, I cannot think they are so terrible as to warrant such a fuss over uncovering them.”

Anthony only barely restrains a guilty wince. “I kept your husband late once again, playing at minder with me when he might have been upstairs with you. If you will not hold me to account for last night, allow me an apology for that.”

“Anthony—”

“But you need not worry, it was my last offense of that sort, I assure you,” he cuts over her, ignoring the little annoyed huff she emits in response. “From now on I shall do my drinking alone in the dark, like a proper wretch.”

“You are _not_ a wretch, Anthony,” she insists. Then, her lips twitch into a wry smile. “Well… you are not _often_ a wretch. And when you are, it is most often not your intent.”

“A blow struck direct to the heart.” He clutches his chest.

“Is that truly what you wanted to talk about?” she asks, one brow raised in a skeptical arch. “Your late night spent hiding from my husband like a naughty child with a plate of stolen cakes, and whether you are or are not a wretch?”

“After a fashion.”

“Anthony, what is it? Please. We used to tell each other everything, you must remember. Before father died…” This time, it is Daphne who cannot find a proper end to her thoughts.

“Before father died, a great many things were different,” Anthony finishes for her neatly, understanding exactly what she cannot say.

“Yes, they were.”

They fell silent, lost in the same memories. In each of them father looms like a colossus at the mouth of the harbor, silent and imposing and overshadowing all the land below.

“I think perhaps…” Anthony says slowly, still one foot in that foreign land, stripped of strife and complication by the twin forces of time and regret, “I am one of those things.”

Daphne clearly does not take his meaning, for she stares at him as if he were the one confused. “But surely you must know we have all changed? It has been ten years, we could not help do anything but change.”

“That is not the sort of change I mean.” Anthony shakes his head, searching for the proper words to make her understand the depths of the change.

“What _do_ you mean?”

“I was not always like... _this_. Brooding. Stiff. I even seem to recall a time when I thought I might be the amusing one in the family. Then Benedict came along and I was no longer my only competition and that spoiled any hope of that, but at least… I was not always like this, was I?” Daphne makes an inquisitive sound and he tries to keep his tone light when he elaborates, though that too is a failure before he even begins. “Ill-prepared, arrogant Anthony. So certain he sees the field clearly in any engagement and unwilling to listen to advice to the contrary. So ready to ‘do what he must’.”

“Anthony…”

He does not want to hear her protestations any more than he had wanted to hear Simon’s. “And yet despite all that, I always seem to make a hash of things.”

“You are _not_ like that.”

“No?”

“No,” Daphne says softly. “I suppose you can be arrogant, yes, and you have made mistakes, but that hardly sets you apart in our family. A certain shared cheerful arrogance is the Bridgerton way, I am told. And I don't know that one can prepare for the sort of burden you carry. Even when it is _not_ assumed so suddenly.”

They sit in silence a bit, lost again in the shadow of a giant.

“I am afraid I will never reach the example he set, Daph.” The signet ring catches the light nicely when he raises his hand to examine it, rather than search Daphne’s face and see any sign of agreement. That, he surely could not bear. “That I am afraid I have fallen entirely short of father's example. That I will never rise to meet it, so long as I should live.”

“And you have carried this fear alone, all this time?” She must read her answer in his face, for she does not wait for him to say it. “Oh, Anthony. I wish you would have spoken of this sooner, so that I might put those fears to rest. You will make father proud, brother. You already do, I assure you.”

“The vast pile of mistakes strewn around my feet says otherwise.” It is Anthony’s turn to study her features carefully, seeking… he could not say what. She believes her own words, that much is writ large in each line of her body. “But it is kind of you to tell me so, regardless.”

“We all make mistakes, brother. Perhaps they are not all so large as promising me to Nigel Berbrooke...” She takes his hand in her own and brings them down to rest upon the silk of her lap and smiles, stealing some of the sting from another reminder of the dreadful fate he’d so nearly consigned her to. “And what of our brothers and sisters? Or mother? Though they have all made errors, you would not turn them away, or think less of them for having fallen short of their potential on occasion?”

“Of course not,” Anthony says, affronted. “They are our _family_.”

“Just so.” Daphne nods as she always does when she believes her point is already made beyond the slightest possibility of reasonable debate, but has the magnanimity to prolong the argument, nonetheless. “And then, there is me.”

“You?” Anthony wrinkles his brow. “I am afraid this time, I am the one who does not follow.”

“ _I_ have also made a great many mistakes,” she clarifies, “and unless I am mistaken in this as well, you love me even still?”

“You need not ask, Daph.” Impulsively, he lifts her hand and kisses the back. “Ever. Of course I love you. Always.”

“And Simon? What about Simon.”

“Daph…” She refuses his attempts to pull his hand back. “You are being _entirely_ unreasonable. I do hope you are aware of that.”

“What about Simon?” she repeats, utterly insistent and just as insensible to his plight.

“He is my oldest friend,” Anthony attempts to placate her with a half-measure. “Of course I care for—”

“ _Ahem_ ,” Daphne interrupts, and digs her fingernails into the back of his hand with a pointed glare.

“ _Ouch_ , you harpy. Fine. Regardless of the many times he’s bloodied my nose, I do love him.” A truth a shade too close to the _whole_ truth for peace of mind. “You married the man, Daph,” he hastily adds, “he’s family now. So long as he is good to you, could I not?”

“Then why can you not trust that we feel the same way about you?”

“You _are_ sweet, sister.” Lovely as the words are to hear, they hold no ring of truth. “But you are comparing two entirely different things.”

“How are they different? You love us, and we love you.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“How?” Daphne insists, voice sharpening and gaining in volume with irritation. “And you would accuse _me_ of being unreasonable. You, who cannot speak in anything but riddles today and thinks he alone defies the same rules that govern the rest of us?”

“It is not that _simple_ , Daph,” he retorts, temper rising to meet her own. “And it is not how you make it sound.”

“Anthony, it is _exactly_ how I have made it sound.” She releases his hand to cross her arms under her bosom, and he can only hope she has already become wroth enough to miss the way his eyes linger. “You admit are my brother, and so you love me without hesitation or limitation. I am your sister, and I love you just the same. How is that anything but simple?”

“Daphne, it is just _not_. You do not have to—"

“ _Hush_.” She sounds enough like mother Anthony falls silent without another thought. “I hoped that might work. I have been practicing, for the little one. They must learn to fall into line, as surely as we all did.” She smoothes an affectionate hand over the swell of her stomach, smiling proudly. “Anthony, you do not need to be father. You only need be yourself. That would surely be enough.”

“I love that you believe it should be so.” He finds himself blinking away tears for the second time in as many days. “But I do not see how it _could_ be.”

“It is, Anthony! If not for you, it is still enough to _me_. You are enough, to me.”

“ _Daphne_ ,” Anthony chokes out, “If you only knew, you would not say such kind things to me.”

“Love without limitations, Anthony. Is that not what I said? There is nothing you could confess to me that would cause me to hold you any less dear. Please, whatever it is, tell me. _Please_ , brother.”

“I…” Anthony’s breath catches in his throat. Madness seizes him, the sort that brought him to Siena’s door with that damned bouquet firmly in hand, and the words begin to rise. “I find I am once again afraid.” A telltale flash of red waistcoat passes the barest edge of his field of vision, barely more than a smear of there and gone color. It is enough to remind Anthony of the life waiting outside this temporary sanctuary and save him from the wild urge to assemble the resulting tumult of feeling her words call forth in his breast into speech. “Afraid we have company,” he finishes, breathing choppy with equal parts relief and regret. “There’s your husband now. Simon!”

Simon emerges around the next stack. “Ah, you so you are here. I had not seen you.” He looks almost apologetic, though Anthony cannot imagine why given their respective positions. “You bellowed?”

“Your wife needs you. She has turned her steely eye upon me for lack of your charms. Perhaps you ought to give her a seeing-to and enable my escape?” With a start Anthony finds it is his _own_ voice that has uttered such a suggestion. “I did not mean…”

“Too late,” Simon says, entirely inappropriately gleeful in a way Anthony finds rather smug and not at _all_ attractive, “The suggestion is made.”

Anthony does not turn to _see_ their lips meet when Simon leans down to close the distance between them, but it is no use. Full dark or struck blind by divine wrath, he would not need eyes for this. They are so close he can measure the space between their breaths with intimate confidence. Each sound is perfectly formed, crisp and echoing down to his very soul.

“You might wait. I am _right here_ ,” he says weakly, watching the fine tremble of desire to reach out and touch what is so close to hand move his fingers. “I cannot think I am so easy to ignore.”

“You are impossible to ignore,” Simon reassures him, breaking the kiss with a wet sound Anthony would perish and burn to hear even just once more.

“Yes,” Daphne says, “Utterly impossible. Do you have any other instructions? Because unless you plan to stay, brother…”

“ _Hah_.” Anthony shifts, sweat beginning to gather at the back of his neck. “How entirely hilarious.”

“Oh? So you do not wish to join us?” Simon asks. “What a pity.”

“ _Well_ ,” Anthony nearly shouts, feeling again like Hyacinth's poor cat confronted by a veritable no man’s land marked out on all sides by mischievous children and a bag of flour. “You shall... enjoy yourselves quite admirably without me, I suppose. Right,” he looks to Daphne for help but she only nods, eyes wide with poorly contained mirth. “ _Right_ ,” he repeats, to no one in particular. “Good.”

They do not even _pretend_ not to laugh at him as he leaves. They do not even wait until he reaches the door to begin doing so, in fact, and when he slams it behind them they only laugh harder, loud enough to be heard through the wood. 

* * *

It is only later that evening, while he paces the length of his room and runs each detail back in his mind seeking their elusive, hidden meaning that a thought occurs:

 _Something_ is not quite right. There must be a key detail he is entirely missing. Coincidence and the passion of a couple only recently married and even more recently recommitted is enough to explain away the Incidents, even without the possibility of the long arm of the Lord God Almighty himself reaching down to show a wayward sinner the error of his ways.

What happened in the library… what had been said… the things they’d nearly suggested… it defied previous explanations, demanding further study and a thorough recategorization. Anthony feels as though whatever it is he is not factoring in must be _pivotal_ , and if only he might decipher the afternoon's true meaning the picture would begin to resolve itself of its own volition, free of his fumbling attempts towards comprehension.

After hours of such ruminations, he finds himself stymied. What that meaning may be is a mystery locked behind doors for which he most certainly does not have the right keys to open, but all the same, one inescapable conclusion is at hand:

Those keys he requires are waiting, hidden just out of his sight, and given only a little more time he will find them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anthony is like 99% sure Daphne is a pure and perfect angel who has never made any mistakes ever HE WILL FUCKING FIGHT YOOOOOOOU, & etc.
> 
> I toyed around with being vaguer re: Anthony's dumb ass being all I WILL 1000000000% DIE SOON BECAUSE OF MY DADDY ISSUES, THIS IS _SCIENCE_ OKAY, FUCKIN' MAGNETS AND SHIT or whatever because it hasn't been been explicitly confirmed they’re going that far with it in the show yet and then I decided nah, fuck it. If I am doing this thing, I am doing it _right_ , and that means including Anthony's most OTT daddy shit. 
> 
> Sorry not sorry for the taking the scenic route to Deeper Feelsville.
> 
> Aaaaaaaand on a less fun note: well, it's been... a hell of a week, huh? I meant to post this earlier and then, you know. There was an attempted fascist coup in my country's capitol and that was certainly good and cool and very not stressful! Anyway, this feels like an odd space to get serious but an even odder time to not say anything at all, so what I will say is this: take care of yourselves, take care of each other, always look out for the ones who need it most, and fuck the motherfucking fash.


End file.
